Rumor: Best Buy to Open Online Movie Store

Electronista reports:

Entertainment magazine Variety claims to have heard from movie studio executives that the retailer is talking to CinemaNow and “other online movie services” to establish a link between itself and one of these services.

Hulu Coming to the iPhone; will be “Badass”.

Dan Frommer writes:

Hulu is in the process of developing an app for Apple’s (AAPL) iPhone and iPod touch, we have learned from a plugged-in industry executive. The app is coming soon (within a few months) and is “badass” — as excellent as Hulu’s Web site. Video will work over both wi-fi and 3G, we’re told

via Business Insider

Time-Warner Bandwidth Cap Protest: April 18 @ 11am [UPDATED]

There’s going to be a large protest in Rochester, NY on Saturday to fight the upcoming “tired pricing” aka absurdly-low bandwidth caps.

Date: Saturday, April 18, 2009
Time: 11:00am – 5:00pm
Location: Time Warner Cable Store
Street: 71 Mt. Hope Avenue
City/Town: Rochester, NY

Join the Time Warner broadband capping protest!
Protest RoadRunner’s new pricing scheme
Stop the Cap!

(Via BoingBoing)

A second protest will be happening simultaneously in Greensboro, North Carolina.

Date: Saturday, April 18, 2009
Time: 11:00am – 5:00pm
Location: Time Warner Cable Spring Garden Street Office
Street: 1813 Spring Garden St.
City/Town: Greensboro, NC

(via News-Record.com)

Time-Warner Cable’s Data Cap Trial Stalls Due To Lack Of Interest

From the “What Were They Thinking Department”:

…it looks like the company’s plan to further roll out testing of the consumption-based billing method has been foiled, or at least stalled, because it couldn’t find enough customers to participate in the testing. TWC had planned to test in several loactions, including San Antonio and Austin, Texas, but the response has apparently been so negative, and there were so many complaints, that the company has “delayed” the trials until October.

(via engadget)

Get Your Learn On: Educational TV meets New Media

Why let Hulu rot your brain when you can actually use the internet to educate yourself?

Academic Earth joins Google’s YouTube EDU and Apples’ iTunes U in bringing higher education to the masses. All three services offer free video lectures from top universities and the greatest minds alive. Expand yours today.

Academic Earth | iTunes U | YouTube EDU

[UPDATE: Also check out FORA.tv and Big Think.
Thanks to TechCrunch for the tip]

Warner Bros. Studios Now Streaming Classic (and not so Classic) Films

In addition to the Made-to-Order DVD service I told you about a few days ago, Warner has opened it’s own video store.

Rent, Buy, Download, Stream, or have your movie mailed on a plastic disc.

[UPDATE: Windows & IE only for streaming. Vista only for Downloads.]

2001: A Space Odyssey costs $2.95 to rent and $9.95 to buy.

Check out Warner On Demand and The Warner Archive.

The Empire Strikes Back: Comcast and Warner will CAP your ass!

The Status Quo is not going quietly into that goodnight.

In an effort to dissuade you from combining two bills into one, two major providers will start capping one of your networks to make it less useful and more expensive. No word as to whether or not they will continue to call it “unlimited”.

Time Warner Cable and Comcast Cable (two companies with vested interests in keeping you from combining your bills) are expanding the areas where they place data caps on their internet service.

Warner is going the Cell Phone Method of charging you for going over your limit. You will be charged for exceeding a newly imposed limit that you didn’t agree to when you signed up.

[UPDATE: Overages are capped at $75 a month, meaning $150 a month gets you unlimited internet with the Turbo package—or really, you could just get a lower package and use as much as you want and pay less. The only real consideration is speed. GigaOM astutely notes that $150/month for unlimited internet is the exact amount Time Warner would need to pull in to make the same amount of money if you killed the cable box and switched to watching all of your video online—as we've long crowed that much of this is about their fear of internet video. (via Gizmodo)]

Comcast is going the Bartender/Drug Dealer Method. They will just cut you off. No running a tab.

You gave me $100 in cash. I gave you $100 worth of service. Yougotaproblemwiththat? Talk to Vinny.

No word as to the price of getting re-connected.

Both of Warner and Comcast are claiming that it is solely illegal file traders that will be affected – pretending that Hulu, Amazon, Netflix, VUDU, Joost, iTunes, TV.com, YouTube, and the rest of my list of links don’t exist*.

Hey Warner/Comcast! According to my survey, 80% stream or download shows already… and 25% have cut cable completely. Good luck fighting the future.

(Business Week via Gizmodo)

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*I expect both to claim they are doing this because of Net Neutrality, when in fact Net Neutrality (if implemented) would keep them from being able to do this. Blaming Net Neutrality for higher prices will get the uninformed to be against Net Neutrality.

Why Doesn’t Ted Koppel Have a Nightly Video Podcast?

Internet news needs investigative journalists with credibility and integrity to create compelling original content.

There is nothing inherent to ink-on-paper that makes it better suited for telling news.

The internet frees video news from the shackles of network censors and the time constraints of a formula news show.

I would buy any product that buys in-line ad time for Ted Koppel: Uncensored, and would watch it every night if they made their API available for Boxee, App Store Apps, and the like.

Deaf-Blind Woman: “I’m Fed up with CNN!”

Coco writes:

I have been silent til now. Call it apathy. I’m always advocating, sometimes I take a back seat to it, thinking others would notice and take the issues headon. But I don’t see anyone standing up to CNN and telling them off for not subtitling their “video” articles.

I love CNN and it’s the one of four things I first check in the mornings and before I hit the sack. (if you must know, I check facebook.com, cnn.com. gmail.com and sinfully read perezhilton.com). I see awesome, horrible, weird, urgent or boring news titles on CNN.COM. Some of them are done in text. Some done in videos.
And I get disappointed if the article turns out to be video. I don’t understand a damn thing these lips are yapping about.

Today, I saw this title: Facebook Users Hit with Worm.

Uh oh. I must read! I’m a facebook user. So I check this link -

http://www.cnn.com/video/#/video/us/2009/03/02/barnett.facebook.worm.cnn

and it leads me to cnn’s video site. Aw come onnnnnnn! I wanna read what they’re saying! I’m a facebook junkie, I need to check it 8287465128 times a day (like the rest of you). So I want to know if my baby is OK?

I’m curious. What is the FCC doing about this? Has internet laws been passed? I have no idea what’s going on with technology these days. I’m tech-illiterate. But I know that this captioned-for-net broadcasts from news MUST HAPPEN. And now.

Someone over there in the USA, the land of the free, SPEAK UP AND WHOOP CNN’S A$$! Its your fundamental right!

Ok, feeling good after speaking up my mind. Looking forward to the day I read subtitles/captions on CNN and beyond.

Tactile love,

Coco

My wife doesn’t hear as well as she used to. Captions and subtitle make her (and our neighbors) happier than just cranking up the sound.

I agree that CNN needs to caption their video news, but I’m not so sure legislation is necessary.

Opinion: Fed Up With CNN @ Tactile The World

My Desk is my Entertainment Center …and vice versa.

My computer is my TV and my TV is my computer, which means my entertainment center must also pull double duty as my desk.

The keyboard drawer is deep enough for two keyboards (the very clicky Matais Tactile Pro and the very quiet Apple Keyboard) and wide enough for the mousepad to rest on one side, and iPods/iPhones can rest on the other.

Currently to the immediate left of the “stand” is the “component shelf”. This houses my Mac (which had to be configured to output multi-channel sound), My 7.1 amp, my DVD player, my printer, and it used to hold my Roku Netflix Player (before I sold it).

Even though I have a 7.1 amp, I only have 5.1 sound (the amp has a setting to down-sample 7.1 content to 5.1 speakers) right now. I feel no rush to buy another pair of speakers before I get a BluRay player to take advantage of them. I haven’t permanently hung the speakers, because I am planning on spinning the room 90 degrees. The left front speaker is in the corner, as is the subwoofer. The center speaker is directly behind the monitor. The front right is on top of a bookshelf.

One rear speaker is on top of the filing cabinet, the other on top of the DVD Shelf.

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My Old Entertainment Center

My last TV was so giant, only a giant entertainment center would house it. When we moved into a cabin in the woods for a year, it took almost a week for me to get all of it out there. (I had to carry it in a wheelbarrow)

When our year was up, we moved out – but left the TV and entertainment center there.
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My Ever-changing Desk

My desk is made of industrial shelving.

Originally built in 1998 as an editing workstation, it has been re-built again and again.

It has been low and wide, it’s been flat, it’s been bottom heavy, and top heavy.

The first attempt at turning into an entertainment center was a bit gigantic.

But now it’s under control. (and broken into three pieces)

Hulu is #4 with a bullet!

Erick Schonfeld writes:

Hulu jumped two spots to become the fourth largest video site in the U.S. in February, according to the latest data from comScore VideoMetrix. Hulu drew an audience of 34.7 million people who watched 332.5 million video streams. That is a 42 percent increase in unique U.S. visitors, up from 24.5 million in January, and a 33 percent increase in streams, up from and 250.5 million streams.

In a single month, Hulu overtook Viacom and Microsoft in total viewers and video streams (see January data). And Hulu is catching up to No. 3 video site Yahoo, which streamed 353.5 million streams in February. Fox Interactive (MySpace) was No. 2 with 462.6 million streams. And YouTube once again blew everyone else out of the water with 5.3 billion streams.

Hulu Gains 10 Million Viewers In February, Now No. 4 Video Site In U.S. @ TechCrunch

Social TV is the future.

Sarah Reedy lets us know that TV is getting social:

When this season’s Bachelor used national television to dump his bride-to-be for the runner-up, nearly every Bachelor-loving female reflected her disdain in a Facebook or Twitter status update.

[...]

According to Tracy Swedlow, CEO and analyst with Interactive TV Today, which is hosting a conference next week on the future of TV, social networking should be priority No. 1 for IPTV providers. She said that telcos should start with basics such as enabling live IM chats during popular TV shows — think American Idol, Lost, 24 or any number of prime-time programs — and eventually get deeper into social communication, including video conferencing. And, they should be doing this ASAP.

The article is quite a read, but the money quote is this:

“If you don’t see social TV as one of your highest priority, you are going to get left behind,” Swedlow said. “The Internet is nothing but about communication.”

Is TV the next Facebook? @ TelephonyOnline

Hand Talks Out of Its Ass: Sock Puppet thinks Boxee steals from Hulu.

[Update: Edited for clarity and to fix grammatical errors]

Lately, many people who are ignorant of how the internet and APIs work are showing off their ignorance.

Loren Feldmen does it twice in one video. First by choosing a video host that doesn’t allow embedding (and expecting the internet to still behave like it did in 2006), second by suggesting that Boxee is stealing content from Hulu.

He says it himself at the beginning: Boxee is a browser for your TV. Yet at around the four minute mark he says:

Boxee (now) takes Hulu (ok) AND the content that Hulu cut deals with. Now Lets Talk about the content.

Then he goes on to rant about how taking content is wrong, and that artists deserve compensation.

The problem is: Boxee is no more stealing content from Hulu than Firefox is.

Yes, taking content is wrong. However, no one took anything. You just kinda breezed over that fact.

The content is the exact same content users of the website see in Fullscreen Mode. Boxee is just a browser.

Hulu is still serving up the content and still serving up the ads.

The Sock Puppet thinks that somehow pulling up a website in a different browser makes it “from a different provider”, and that if you use Boxee you aren’t getting your content from Hulu. The rest of his rant is based on this misconception.

Anyway, back to the Sock Puppet:

You guys get so hooked in with the fuckin’ distribution that you forget about the content. The content is having to deal with Charlie Sheen @ $600,000 a week, showing up drunk, so you can fucking watch it on Hulu. Ok. They cut those deals.

OK. There’s so much wrong there. I’ll start with Charlie Sheen. Mr. Sheen works for Chuck Lorre Productions. (Also, he’s clean and sober). He does not work with anyone connected with Hulu or it’s corporate parents.

Next, you seem to be using “Content” interchangeably to refer to both “Content Producers” and “Content Distributers”. You’re falling for the same trick the RIAA pulls when it behaves as if they are the ones making the music.

Most television shows are made by independent production companies and are merely distributed by TV networks. (That’s what all those cards at the end of every show are all about.)

The production company gets compensated when they sell (first-)broadcast rights to a block of episodes. Often they will pre-sell the show before filming anything other than a single episode. Often they will seek Network funding to pay for the single episode in return for first pick-up rights. This is what gives laymen the impression that the networks make the shows. The money is flowing from the network, but it’s payment for a delivery. (The network makes money by “giving away” the shows via live broadcast stream, and selling ad time at a rate based on the number of eyeballs the “give away” brings in.)

[This isn't how ALL TV Procuction is done. Some shows sell all their rights to the Networks including aftermarket (syndication and DVD) rights, others sell their rights to Domestic Television Distributors (who then license them to the Networks), and some shows actually ARE produced in-house (but very little of it is Primetime content). The point is: One all-encompassing label, like "Content" or "Content Provider" gives distributors too much credit and works on the assumption that the producer isn't going to find a new distributor. (It happens. "Scrubs" jumped from NBC to ABC this year). ]

Anyway, back to the Sock Puppet:

Boxee took TV Shows from the web and put back on your TV

No. They didn’t. Boxee is a browser. It’s a computer program, It doesn’t run on a TV. It runs on a computer. If someone connects that computer to a TV you don’t magically deserve more money because the picture is bigger and the viewer can sit in a comfy chair.

Besides, a digital TV screen is nothing but a computer monitor. Boxee can’t be held liable for the size of people’s computer monitors.

And Now the guys who create The TV

You mean “The guys who distribute licensed shows”

…are saying “Listen. We don’t want it on Boxee”.

How about Opera? Is Safari OK? What about IE?

Dumbasses.

You don’t want it on Boxee? I got news for you. The Makers of that content want it on Boxee, and sooner or later, we’ll have our Nine Inch Nails / Radiohead and they WILL bypass you.

If you’re going to watch TV on a TV, how about this: WATCH IT ON FUCKING TV. IS THAT SO UNFAIR? They’re already dealing with DVRs, OnDemand… they’re paying Charlie Sheen. You’re not.

It is not your customer’s job to support your business model.

If you make less money per viewer because that viewer watched it Via Web Browser vs Via Cable then you got screwed in negotiations.

As we are moving from one type of distribution model to another, all the middlemen are trying to take bigger bites than they used to have.

Content Makers (not distributors) need to realize:
1. the dollar-to-eyeball ratio is the most important metric,
2. the distributers will screw both the people they buy content from AND the people they sell content to, if you don’t watch them
3. the distributers will cloud the subject with red herrings.

People watching Hulu in Boxee rather than Firefox is a Red Herring to distract from the REAL problems with internet video advertising revenue and artist compensation.

If the eyeballs-per-dollar ratio the advertisers are paying Hulu isn’t the same as broadcast/cable/satellite – that’s a problem.

If the eyeballs-per-dollar ratio Hulu is paying The Networks isn’t the same as broadcast/cable/satellite – that’s a problem.

If the eyeballs-per-dollar ratio the Networks are paying the people who actually make the content isn’t the same as broadcast/cable/satellite – that’s a problem.

It’s about the content, not the web site.
The red herring worked. In order to to stress that you should watch it on the Hulu website, The Sock Puppet keeps repeating:

Boxee is just an add-on. A browser. It’s all about the content.

Take your own advice Sock Puppet: Stop focusing on the browser. Stop focusing on the web site. It’s about the content of the stream. Hulu is Hulu in every browser! In Firefox, Safari, IE, or on Boxee; it all comes from the same place and 100% of the in-line ads get passed along. Boxee’s existence in no way lessens the number of streamed ads that get fed to eyeballs.

Hulu’s corporate parents behave as if the point of the endeavor is the website. Content is the bait to get eyeballs to the website (just like a TV network), and ad sales will pay for the website (just like a TV network). Unfortunately, that business model only works if your viewers are coming to see the website itself and only care about the video content as much as the wallpaper and the flash ads.

Advertisers: Hulu can’t deliver on a promise that the number of eyeballs that watched the stream will be equal to the number of eyeballs that saw a banner ad.

Banner ad impressions should be measured independently and sold to advertisers separately from the in-line ads. If they aren’t, then the advertisers should be demanding to know why not. Hulu shouldn’t be bundling all their different advertising methods (banners, pop-ups, in-line) into a single unified price scheme.

If they ARE priced and sold separately, then this is the biggest overreaction to a browser I’ve seen in a long time.

If Hulu was smart, it would license the API for their stream.
It should be done for two reasons: a) to insure proper usage and accurate viewership counting, and b) to allow for a Network TV style price structure where ad revenue for in-line ads would scale up with viewership. The money generated from the website would become “icing on an API cake” rather than the cornerstone of the business model.

Hulu can make more money on a raw stream than their website could ever generate. Remember: It’s about the content. With Boxee, viewers watch shows and ads. What’s the problem?

If you don’t like the dollars-to-eyeballs ratio of streaming your video, negotiate for comparable-to-broadcast rates. Bitching because your viewer is legally watching via a more convenient legally available method is stupid and pointless.

The Sock Puppet finishes up by saying that micropayments are the future, and every show worth watching will be charging. You’ll pay or not watch.

Good Luck stuffing the genie back in that bottle. It worked so well for the RIAA and the MPAA.

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[UPDATE: Four days after posting, I went back to his site to catch up on the reaction to my Trackback, if any, and found the link gone, the comments closed, and nary a mention of this piece. Read into that whatever you want.]

The Evolution of Television

The evolution of television is really just the continued evolution of our greatest interpersonal communications system. It was born out of language, matured with writing, and continues to evolve today through interfaces such as the web.

— Aaron Smith

Warner Bros launches “made-to-order” DVD service

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – Warner Bros on Monday became the first studio to open its film vault to “made-to-order” DVDs, as it sought new revenues in a slumping DVD market by making it possible for fans to buy decades-old films.

Warner Bros, owned by Time Warner Inc, made an initial batch of 150 titles available for purchase online at www.WarnerArchive.com , including 1943 comedy-romance “Mr. Lucky” starring Cary Grant and the 1962 release “All Fall Down” with Warren Beatty and Eva Marie Saint.

Sales are not expected to approach those of new releases on DVD, but the service gives Warner Bros another way to make money from a film archive it already exploits by selling titles for broadcast in the United States and internationally.

The on-demand service allows Warner Bros. to avoid the risk of manufacturing too many copies of old or obscure titles and shipping them to retailers because customers directly order only the titles they want to buy.

“This way you’ve completely eliminated the risk of not selling them. You’re not going to make them until they’re sold,” said Tom Adams, president and senior analyst with Adams Media Research.

Warner Bros. said that each month it will make about 20 films and television programs from its archive available for purchase through this DVD-on-demand program.

The new Warner Bros. initiative comes as the movie industry faces declining DVD sales. Last year, amid the ongoing recession DVD sales fell by 7 percent to $21.6 billion, the Digital Entertainment Group said.

Studios are mainly looking to the emerging Blu-ray disc market to counter declining DVD sales, Adams said.

Last year, sales of Blu-ray discs quadrupled to nearly $750 million, the Digital Entertainment Group said.

But with the new DVD-on-demand service, Warner Bros can supplement its sales by appealing to collectors and fans.

The Warner Bros film archive has 6,800 titles. Since it entered the DVD market in 1997, the studio has released only around 1,200 of those titles from the vault. By comparison, the company expects by the end of the year to have more than 300 titles available via the DVD-on-demand service.

“I think ultimately the odds are very good that every film ever made will be available on this kind of basis, because why not?” Adams said.

Warner Bros. is charging customers $19.95 per title, plus shipping, for the new service. Titles also can be downloaded directly to a customer’s computer.

(Reporting by Alex Dobuzinskis: Editing by Bob Tourtellotte and Gunna Dickson)

Via Reuters

Warner Mutes and Deletes YouTube Videos

Jennifer Bosavage writes:

As the battle between YouTube and publishers such as Warner Music Group heats up, increasing numbers of video content publishers are finding that their videos have been stripped of their background music–or they’ve been removed entirely from the site.

Warner To YouTube: Stop The Music! @ ChannelWeb

More on TV’s Autopsy

Media Analyst Don Cole traveled 200,000 miles per year annually for decades visited with local TV stations, cable interconnects, magazines, clients, client prospects, and all sorts of new media sales teams.

He believes that Nothing Can Replace Television and It Almost Has!

He gives wonderful write-up on the progression that the cancer that network tv is suffering from.

He begins with where the symptoms are worst and (ironically) least visible: Local Affiliates.

What I see and hear stuns me. The broadcast media, as a group, are in almost complete denial about what is going on in our world of media. When the relentless march of broadcast fragmentation is brought up, local station people respond with “have you seen our local news. It is extraordinary.” I have and it is not.

Ask industry people about how DVR’s are changing the effectiveness of TV as an advertising medium and the more mature (in age only) say something to the effect that they hope they will be retired before the effects are truly felt in the marketplace. What kind of answer is that?.

He touches on our POV a bit.

Today’s consumers are now in control and they are not going back to being passive viewers again. Life “on-demand’ appeals to people. DVR’s, blogs, You tube, Hulu.com, The Slingbox, streaming video, new cable platforms, and many other possibilities have permanently upset the TV landscape. Watch how a young adult uses media–are you positioning your campaigns to reach young people well or at all for that matter?

…but then goes into Protectionist Mode.

There is also a terrible danger with the presence of legacy mentalities out there. People sit in meetings and nod vigorously when I say that TV is losing its luster as a sales medium. But, moments later they say something to the effect that the solution to TV’s slow death is simply adding more weight. Add more weight? They will still miss the people that they are missing now! All additional weight will do is add significant frequency to the same folks they reach now who are heavy TV viewers and not always the most desirable prospects.

He does touch on TV’s tool as a currently-ubiquitous communication medium and laments the loss of roadblocks and vertical strikes, but fails to understand that the underlying goal that those tools provided – to get information out to a majority percentage of the population – will not die with it.

Just as the death of newspapers doesn’t mark the end of journalism, the death of TV isn’t killing mass-media.

The middlemen will shift. Those that adapt will survive. Those who would apply radio rules to magazines and billboard rules to TV will try to get TV rules to apply to the internet.

Watch.

Boxee Adds Pandora, PBS, New API (and Fixes Hulu)

Open-source media center Boxee debuted a new Alpha release tonight, adding support for Pandora music streaming, PBS video feeds, and changes that open it up to more multimedia goodness (oh, and fix Hulu streaming, too).

Here’s a look at what’s new in the latest build, as well as the newest plug-in from some Boxee-loving code tweakers:

Continue reading @ Lifehacker

600 People Show Up For Boxee Event

The event, held in NYC, drew a large and diverse crowd

Vincent Polidoro, a 25-year-old filmmaker in New York who persuaded Mr. Clemons to attend the gathering, said he had recently joined the ranks of those who adore the service, which many people use to pipe video from a computer to a TV screen.

“It’s nice to have an alternative way to get content,” he said. “I’m sick of being married to Comcast or some other service provider.” Attending the Boxee event, he said, reinforced the idea that “the Internet is our medium and finally, here is a service that gets how we want to use it.”

Looking around the room and seeing his peers, he said, made him like the service even more.

Tom Conrad, chief technology officer at Pandora, the streaming music service, said he was amazed at the turnout and by the makeup of the audience, which he said seemed fairly mainstream. This could indicate a larger shift in the way audiences are consuming entertainment: “Just the fact alone that 80 percent of Boxee users have it connected to their television, that stat alone amazes me,” he said.

New York Times

NBC Double-Dipping iTunes Customers?

Could it be possible that, after all this time, NBC still thinks that it’s a good business decision to try to squeeze the few internet viewers that actually pay for content for extra payments?

Thomas Fitzgerald writes:

So the season Finale of Battlestar Galactica aired on friday night on the SciFi (sorry, SyFy) channel in the US and I think it would be fair to say that the two hour episode was one of the most eagerly awaited events on television in years. The show has a huge fan base and the much publicized finale was something everyone was gearing up for. Of course a lot of people get their shows off iTunes and this was probably one of the most eagerly awaited downloads since iTunes began selling TV shows. So you can only imagine how pissed off a lot of people were when they decided to split the finale into two parts on iTunes so they could charge twice as much for it.

[...]

People want to pay for content. I know the execs at NBC and every other major studio don’t believe that, but a lot of people are willing to pay for good high quality access to their favorite TV shows. But they don’t like being taken advantage of either. As many commenters on iTunes have pointed out, it’s crap like this that pushes people back to bit-torrent.

Read the whole rant @ It’s crap like this that makes people pirate

Have You Switched From Cable to The Internet? 24% Say “Yes”, another 52% Say “Some”.

An Internet Poll asks: Have you switched from Cable to The Internet?

In early results, 52% says they either stream or download shows, and a full 24% of those who responded answered “Yes! I’ve cut the cable and am a 100% internet TV watcher.”

I’ll keep you posted if things change.

Digg @ Digg.com

Tiny Arrow URL: http://➹.ws/ﱴ

Remember when home taping was going to kill Hollywood?

The Pirate Bay.

Boxee MeetUp March 24th in NYC

Speaking of Boxee, if you live in New York (or will happen to be there on March 24), then you should check out the boxee meetup.

They will be releasing a new alpha version during the event and will “share some concrete plans for the beta”.

If you DO attend, send me some pictures.

The State of Streaming TV: Early 2009 Edition

When I cut the cable six months ago, there was almost nothing to watch online (legally). Now you can get almost every network TV show, many cable TV favorites, watch live sports, get cable and network news, local weather, and even watch full un-cut movies – legally and free.

I’m beginning to see more and more articles about cutting cable and streaming everything. I don’t think the internet is quite ready for that. I still download over half of my content, but I am streaming more and more.

After my technophobic brother took to Hulu, I started wondering how far streaming has come in six months and how newbie friendly it is. Most of the Networks are doing a good job pimping their websites, so I figure this is how most newbies would take their first steps.

Broadcast Networks: Primetime

ABC
http://abc.go.com/

The American Broadcasting Company’s page is filled with clicky goodness, and free episodes is in large red lettering. OK, it’s a giant advertisement for their linear-delivery network – but it seems internet-delivery friendly enough. A loop of 8 short videos plays in a flash player and they do a pretty good job of explaining the ins and outs of watching TV on the web between the commercials for Scrubs and Desperate Housewives. If only watching the episodes themselves was as simple.

ABC still insists on using their Full Episode Player, which is a separate browser plug-in. The last time I used it it was slow to load, choppy to navigate, and had only one episode of each show online at a time. Yikes. I was reluctant to click it. I shouln’t have been.

What a great improvement! Not only in stability and speed, but in usability.

There isn’t a very big archive, but if you want to watch new episodes, ABC.com has you covered.

Choose a Show

NBC
http://www.nbc.com/

After ABC’s clean site the National Broadcasting Company’s site looks like a barrage of text, a newspaper.

I scanned the page several times before I saw Watch Video or Watch Full Episodes.

Their navigation system is confusing, and what shows up on the page depends on how you navigate to it. If you first click Watch Video in the toolbar then choose a show, you can never get to the same info as you would have found had you clicked “Watch Full Episodes”.

NBC’s site has a lot of content, but considering it’s all mirrored at Hulu, It’s hard to find a reason to go to NBC.com.

CBS
http://www.cbs.com

The Columbia Broadcasting System is the farthest behind. The page is one giant advertisement for their liner-delivery method. It’s filled with clips, re-caps, behind-the-scenes fluff pieces, and teaser-trailers for upcoming episodes. The kind of shovel-ware content that DVD producers have been calling “Special Features” so every release can be called a Special Edition. Every click on their site brings another auto-playing video Blackberry ad.

CBS makes the availability of full episodes less-than-obvious, and when you DO find them CBS makes you join a chat room in order to watch it. Yes, you can opt out but you have to log in first. I chose Late Late Show with Craig Fergeson… which, after a looong load time, I joined in progress. It didn’t start at the beginning! Clicking “Watch By Myself” starts it from the beginning. I guess you can’t be social AND watch from the beginning unless you have impeccable timing or a lot of patience.

Also, CBS viewer is the only Flash Player I’ve ever seen with advertising logos. The social interaction allows you to put the Intel Inside logo and chime on the video, for everyone else watching to see. I don’t know what to say.

CBS has a YouTube Channel, but the content is just as lame.

FOX
http://www.fox.com

News Corp. owns 20th Century Fox which owns FOX Television which owns FOX on Demand. F.O.D. is easy to navigate and content is plentiful. The site even seems to put a priority on streaming over broadcast. Didn’t see it when it was on the air? Watch it here! Watch it now! it invites.

It even has little niceties like when an episode will show up online and what episode in the list is currently playing.

The CW
http://www.cwtv.com

Born from a union of Warner Brother’s The WB and Paramonunt’s UPN, The CW is the hot network for young adults. The Full Episodes link on the main page is small, but the content makes up for it. During the regualr season, all the latest episodes are available for instant viewing.

However, today, there are only a handful available for viewing.

PBS
http://www.pbs.org

Like CBS, the Public Broadcast System’s home page is a barrage of text. Watch Episodes is easy enough to spot, but the collection of videos is a just a fraction of PBS’ archive and it doesn’t seem to be updated with any regularity. Perhaps we should get the new President to put more than just his weekly address on YouTube.

Broadcast Networks: News and Sports

ABC News
http://abcnews.go.com

ABC News pulls up like any other news site. In fact, the Watch Video link is so subtle, you might underestimate how Streaming Friendly this site really is. Like it’s parent channel’s site, ABCNews.com use the Full Episode Player, but instead of being designed around Prime Time Programming, it centers on ABC’s News division. Good Morning America, Nightline, World News Now, 20/20… they’re all there in their entirety.

NBC News and NBC Sports
http://www.nbc.com/News_and_Sports/
http://nbcsports.msnbc.com/

Not very video friendly at all. With some clicking around I found some clips of the NBC Nightly News with Brian Williams hosted on an msnbc server.

CBS News
http://www.cbsnews.com/

Not very video friendly at all. The word Video is in TINY print, then it’s mostly just clips. Full Episodes are rare and hard to find. I’d give it a C+.

Cable Networks: Primetime

ABC Family
http://abcfamily.go.com/

I used to think of this as the easy to use ABC Network site but with the radical improvement to the Full Episode Player @ ABC.com and ABCNews.com, ABC Family now seems clunky. There’s lots of content, both new and vintage, including some Made-for-TV movies. Full Episodes, Clips and Previews are well balanced.

A&E
Bravo
The Discovery Channel, TLC and Animal Planet
E!
Food Network
HGTV
Lifetime
MTV, MTV2, and MTV Music
TBS
USA Network

Cable Networks: News and Sports

FOX News
CNN
MSNBC
CNBC
ESPN

Internet Original: News

The Presidential Address
Associated Press

Internet Original: Sports

????

Cable Networks

[NOTE: I wrote this fragment of an article on January 4. By January 6th, much of it was outdated. By January 15th all of my notes for the unwritten article were outdated, too. I'm publishing the article fragment as an "artifact of a long time passed". Yes, two months ago is a long time.]

Internet Television Test, Week 38: Using an iPhone 3G as my TV remote [Updated]

My Mac doesn’t have a remote control. It predates the Apple Remote by a year (and even if it didn’t, towers don’t have IR sensors).

I could buy a USB IR sensor and an Apple Remote, buy I’d also have to buy software to make the IR sensor work. Total cost: $50+

For $30ish, I could just buy a RF remote with a USB dongle, but then I wouldn’t have the sleek Apple Remote. Instead, I’d be controlling my Mac with something that looks like a garage door opener.

Eight months have passed. IR remotes got worse and RF remotes got better, but I never bought either one.

Instead, my wife got an iPhone.

[She's nearly got me convinced that I can't live without one, but I'm holding off as long as I can. My trusty Nokia 6102i is barely two years old, but is breaking. Scotch tape has been holding it together for almost two months, but the other day a small metal piece popped out of the hinge and disappeared into the fourth dimension. Now, every time I flip it open it gets a little worse. I just need it to survive until June/July when the new iModels come out.]

On her phone we have VLC Remote, Remote, and Rowmote.

Currently Rowmote is getting the most use. It integrates directly with Front Row and behaves exactly like an Apple Remote, but Remote’s new iTunes DJ integration looks like fun.

The only problem is: When she’s not home, I don’t have a remote controller!

UPDATE: The guys at Boxee shot out an e-mail letting me know that they have a remote in the App Store, but until I get a new Mac or Boxee shows some PPC love, I’ll have to admire from a distance.

Shirky is Wrong!

So sayeth Dave Winer:

I was bothered by Clay Shirky’s piece about the death of newspapers that got so much play over the last few days, and finally figured out why as I wrote this piece. He says that journalism is being replaced by nothing. This is why the press likes his piece so much, it’s been their main theme: You’ll miss us when we’re gone. The problem with this thesis is that while the press as been declining a new decentralized press has been booting up. I talk about this toward the end of today’s piece. The sources who no longer trust the journos, or aren’t being called by them when they have something to say, are going direct. This is what replaces journalism. It’s happening everywhere (Shirky’s piece is a great example of it). Sometimes the thing that’s hardest to see is what’s right in front of you.

I didn’t realize I was stepping into a pile of Shirky when I referenced it yesterday.

I believe Shirky is “half right”. He’s right about everything that’s crumbling, but he’s wrong about the lack of a replacement.

In a world of interconnected hypertext, I thought the irony was self evident. I was mistaken.

The (unspoken, and therefore way too subtle) joke was: “OH, noes! Print News is dying and there’s no replacement yet! We better build one!”

The newspapers think they have a lock on news and the death of their news distribution company means the end of news gathering.

Writers will starve!

Newspapers can’t conceive of not being the middlemen between well researched, well written journalism and the reader. Newsmen can’t conceive of a system where they don’t work for a “newspaper”. They get off on a tangent trying to redefine what a “newspaper” is (so the status quo isn’t inturrupted so much).

One side argues that they need to switch from dead trees to web pages and the other side complains about comments on fan blogs getting as much weight as “real newsmen”. Both sides think they need to hurry and neither side realizes that they’ve already been replaced.

They just don’t see it
The replacement was here before the old way started failing. It’s true in music. It’s true in Television and Movies. It’s true in news.

The RIAA thinks they have a lock on music distribution and they preach that the death of their music distribution company means the death of music writing and recording.

Musicians will starve!

The networks think they hav lock on “tv” distribution. They say that the death of their video distribution company means the death of well written, well acted, well produced television.

Actors will starve!

And if they mention the internet at all?
Blogs are unreliable! MySpace is Filled with Amateurs! YouTube Videos are all home videos!

Nevermind the fact that blogs became reliable, MySpace bands got big and Big Bands got MySpace, and The President of the United States got a YouTube Channel.

When I (poorly) made a sarcastic reference to Shirky yesterday, I should have written:

“OH, noes! TV is dying and there’s no replacement yet! We better build one!”

None of these “old media” players understand that the replacement is here already.

TV is dead. What’s to replace it?

Linear delivery, aka “broadcast”, aka “Television as we know it” is dead, but no one has told it, yet.

The old powers are clinging to a delivery/business model that no longer works, demanding to know what’s going to replace television.

To paraphrase Clay Sharky: When someone demands to know how we are going to replace television, they are really demanding to be told that we are not living through a revolution.

Clay Shirky writes:

They are demanding to be told that old systems won’t break before new systems are in place. They are demanding to be told that ancient social bargains aren’t in peril, that core institutions will be spared, that new methods of spreading information will improve previous practice rather than upending it. They are demanding to be lied to.

There are fewer and fewer people who can convincingly tell such a lie.

He wrote it about newspapers, but everything he says applies to television too.

Social Television. Do Couch Potatoes Connect?

Every activity has a Social Networking angle. First it was just the online companies, trying to get you to IM. Then the entertainment companies trying to sell you music or movies. Then activities like drinking soda to buying shoes came with secret games and online cliques.

It was only a matter of time when anti-social activities attempted to get social. It happened with gamers, why not couch potatoes?

In my attempt at “social television”, I signed up for LivingSocial and Twitter, and activated the “Social” settings in Netflix, and the Hulu Social Network.

I’ve dragged my feet in creating a Neurotic Nomad Myspace or Facebook page, hoping that OpenID would allow me to take a lazy way out, but apparently it doens’t work that way.

Now that I’m set up, I should open up the dialog.

What’s the biggest question plaguing you right now when it comes to online TV?

.

.

(crickets)

.

The Hulu Social Network

Hey! Hulu has a social network. Finally a reason to log in.

Somebody “Friend” me.

Television’s Autopsy

Paul Graham writes:

The TV networks already seem, grudgingly, to see where things are going, and have responded by putting their stuff, grudgingly, online. But they’re still dragging their heels. They still seem to wish people would watch shows on TV instead, just as newspapers that put their stories online still seem to wish people would wait till the next morning and read them printed on paper. They should both just face the fact that the Internet is the primary medium.

Why TV Lost

How To Replace Cable with the Internet: Ten Boxes Reviewed

Part 3 of my series keeps getting postponed because of the fast-changing landscape.

In the mean time, Cnet is reviewing the Top 10 boxes that can help you replace television with the internet.

The over-all verdict:

I’ve done a little digging through the CNET Reviews archives to highlight the top 10 boxes/computers for accessing video-on-demand content via the Web. Here’s a brief summary of each, in no particular order. You can see at a glance what makes each one cool and what makes it not so cool. And you’ll get a general idea of how much each one costs.

I’m sorry to say that I haven’t found a box that offers me everything from all the top movies and TV shows to the best local and live TV programming. But the market is still evolving. And I promise you that the landscape could look very different in another 18 months, so stay tuned.

I couldn’t have said it better myself.

Content Providers deal Boxee a fatal blow, Hulu to suffer most.

While they guys at Hulu try to put a positive spin on it by asking that we keep an eye on the bigger picture, things at Boxee is less cheerful.

In the words of Gizmodo’s Matt Buchanan, this is a steaming pile of suck.

Engadget’s Ben Drawbaugh give a glimmer of hope by suggesting that this may signal great things to come.

Hulu to reveal The Big Secret on Super Bowl Sunday.

In a press release, Hulu writes “During Super Bowl XLIII this Sunday, look for the launch of Hulu’s ad campaign. Finally, we’ll reveal the secret behind Hulu.”

Caroline McCarthy said it best.

Ooh! Secrets! I love secrets! Clearly we will learn one of three things this Sunday:
1. Hulu is the Matrix.
2. Hulu is Luke Skywalker’s father.
3. Hulu is people.

Hulu (via Cnet)

New Google Tools Determine if Your ISP Is Blocking BitTorrent

Michael Calore of Wired writes:

Next time you’re dealing with a dreadfully slow internet connection, you can ask Google what’s causing the trouble.

The company announced a new open platform Wednesday called Measurement Lab, or M-Lab for short. As part of the initial launch, M-Lab includes three publicly accessible tools, including a tool called Glasnost that tests whether BitTorrent traffic is being blocked, throttled or otherwise impeded on your broadband connection.

Find the tests @ Measurement Lab (via Wired)

Streaming Superbowl XLIII

It seemed to me the Bittorrents for the last few Superbowls were mildy popular, but that’s just my observation. I have no stats to back that up. Superbowl broadcast ratings are down. They’ve been down for years. That’s well known.

What isn’t known is how the NFL plans to bring it’s product into the 21st century.

The NFL’s bread and butter has always been the play-by-play broadcast of their games. Other football leagues focused on ticket sales and merchandising or on community spirit. The NFL made their money hopping from network to network to show their precious games and sold the Big Game to the highest bidder. Big Brother even had to step in and make the NFL play fair and give everybody a turn, if I remember correctly.

Has there been ANY sort of an announcement of the NFL’s plans to accommodate the post-television generation? The Official Superbowl Page has a countdown clock and tons of hype… but nothing about how to watch the actual game.

Politics wised up. After a terrible online showing during the election gave bootleg streams of CNN great ratings, we were buried in options for streaming live video of the Inauguration. Will this be the moment that Sports learns the hard way?

There’s a ton of money on the table for the advertiser in the browser window of the re-streaming service that will be hosting the bootleg stream. Will it be uStream.TV this time, again, or will everybody be watching a freed Sling Stream?

Multiplex: DVD Jukebox

Smoking Apples has a behind-the-scenes interview with the guys behind Multiplex.

If you’re like me and own a lot of DVDs, Multiplex may be the software you’ve been dreaming of… and they’re giving away copies. Read the article to find out how to get your freebie. Hurry. It’s for a limited time only.

HBO, Showtime, Starz, and.. Epix?

When we switched from Airwaves to Cable/Satellite, America got introduced to a lot more networks. Some came and went (Preview, CBN, TheBox), others became household names (HBO, Showtime, Cinemax).

As we switch from Cable/Satellite we’re having to get used to a lot of new names. Hulu, Joost, Boxee, Netflix, iTunes, VUDU, and now Epix.

Epix is destined for cable/satellite and will compete with HBO and Starz for your Premium Package dollars – but it’s got one foot in the old world and one foot in the new. It will begin streaming it’s channel via it’s website a full five months before their cable/satellite launch.

A consortium of MGM, Paramount Pictures, and Lions Gate, the channel will feature more than 15,000 movies from the three studios.

The new channel, which is intended to compete with HBO and Showtime, will feature such hits as The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, Iron Man, and other movies from the studios’ libraries. The channel is also expected to produce original programming and present live concert performances, as other premium channels do.

Via Cnet:

Netflix saw the future and seized it

In early January 2007, 60 Minutes did a segment on Netflix where CEO Reed Hastings spoke of going from DVD rentals to subscription streaming. He also spoke of the AppleTV (nee.. iTV) and a need to get to the market before it becomes the iPod of video.

I can’t find video of the segment, but I can find a CBS News article covering Netflix where it makes mention of the future of the market. The print article doesn’t include any of Reed Hasting’s quotes about a Netflix set-top box or his vision of getting Netflix out of the DVD rental business and getting into the digital streaming business. The article lays down all the reasons Hastings gave for making the switch, without actually crediting him with saying it.

Once it becomes more practical to buy and rent movies within a few minutes on high-speed Internet connections, few consumers presumably will want to wait a day or two to receive a DVD in the mail. If that happens, Netflix could go the way of the horse and buggy.

Online movie delivery already is available through services like CinemaNow, MovieFlix, Movielink, Vongo and Amazon.com Inc.’s recently launched Unbox. Apple Inc. also is emerging as major player, with hundreds of movies and TV shows on sale at its iTunes store and a new device that promises to transport media from a computer to a TV screen.

But none of those online services have caught on like Netflix’s mail-delivery system, partly because movie and TV studios generally release their best material on DVDs first. The studios have had little incentive to change their ways because DVDs still generate about $16 billion of highly profitable sales.

Like already existing online delivery services, Netflix’s “Watch Now” option offers a lot of “B” movies such as “Kickboxer’s Tears.” But the mix also includes critically acclaimed selections like “Network,” “Amadeus,” “Chinatown” and “The Bridge On the River Kwai.”

The studios contributing to Netflix’s new service include NBC Universal, Sony Pictures, MGM, 20th Century Fox, Paramount Pictures, Warner Brothers, Lion’s Gate and New Line Cinema.

“We are going into this with the knowledge that consumers want to watch (media) in various ways and we want to be there for them,” said Frances Manfred, a senior vice president for NBC Universal. “For now, though, we know television is the vastly preferred option.”

The result is an article that seems as if the ground was going to shift under Netflix and their business model will crumble.

How ironic that CBS (still clinging to their broadcast model and falling way behind the other networks in their online offerings) is having a financial hurt while Netflix is thriving.

Netflix’s bet on the coming trend in video delivery was spot on, and they are reaping the profits. According to Engadget:

The movie rental firm somehow managed to see net income rise to $22.7 million in the quarter, up from $15.7 million in Q4 2007. Revenue was also up by 19 percent, and subscriber growth was pegged at an amazing 26 percent. All told, the firm ended the quarter with 9.4 million subscribers, decimating its own forecast of ending Q4 with 9.15 million customers.

and

The company is reporting that many of its customers are replacing mailed movies with streamed ones, taxing the USPS less and their broadband connections more.

Digital Switch Delayed. No, It’s Not! Yes, It is! No, IT’S NOT!!

I’ve tried writing this post three times this morning. Its not going to happen. The post, I mean.

*Sigh*

YouTube Users Lash Out At Warner/Google With Protest Videos

Michael Arrington of TechCrunch writes:

Two things are clear in the YouTube/Warner Music scuffle. First, neither side is 100% right. And second, users are very, very angry that their videos are being pulled down or muted when they contain background music owned by Warner Music.

Those users aren’t being quiet about it, either. And scores of them are uploading protest videos to say exactly what they think. All are angry at Warner Music. And most express disappointment at Google, too, for reportedly walking away from the deal that allowed Warner’s music to be used legally on the site. I’ve embedded the “best of” below. More are being uploaded in real time, and this has the feel of a situation that is just now starting to boil over.

Videos can be found on TechCrunch.

How To Drop Cable and Satellite and Still Watch Everything, Part 2: Downloads

[Continued from How To... Part 1: Streaming]

Downloads

Streaming isn’t perfect. If my wife is streaming Hart to Hart from Hulu, I’d better not be surfing YouTube on the laptop. If she was watching Fringe (which we download) I’d be fine.

Also, if the weather’s bad, the internet gets slow. That means lots of paused streams and filling buffers. Downloading your show in advance and watching it from your hard drive requires pre-planning, but your efforts will be richly rewarded.

Downloading allows for higher resolution, multi-channel surround, and the possibility of taking it with you on a gadget.

Like Streaming, there are both paid and free options. Also like Streaming, free comes in official and grey-market sources.

Paid Downloads
Six months ago, there was a small selection of places to buy TV shows that I might have cautiously recommended. Today there is only one: iTunes. It’s pricy, but reliable. That’s the only reason it exists at all. Most video stores have shut down (and the few that still exist are focused more on movies than on television).

Reliability is a big deal. Customers that were unlucky enough to buy video from a store that shut down found that their “purchases” weren’t purchases at all – merely licenses that got revoked when the company shut down the server that unlocked your video whenever the next verification was due. DRM (Corporate-speak for “Copy Protection”) may be dying for music sales, but it’s alive and well on television and movie sales. There isn’t a killer gadget or a killer store to strong-arm the networks into giving up on DRM.

Until that time, most internet downloaders are sticking to original content, or just pirating the good stuff.

Free Downloads: Original Content
Podcasts. Holy Cow, podcasts. This one deserves it’s own post.

Free Downloads: The Good Stuff
Arrrg! Mateys! We have a pirate wannabe! Well, I have a disclaimer for you: No TV network condones file trading. If you are trading a file of a TV network show then you are a pirate. And you know how the industry feels about pirates. If you want to risk it, here’s how:

Bittorrent
File trading methods come and go. The flavor of the week is currently Bittorrent. Bittorrent works like a treasure map and magic compass. The .torrent file is the map, and your bittorrent client (software) is the magic compass that finds the thing you’re looking for (treasure). There is a .torrent file on the internet for every episode of every season of practically every show ever. Find the .torrent file, and find the show.

You can set it up to do it all automatically.

TV Torrents on a Mac is as simple as P.T.T.
1. Perian.org – This Quicktime plug-in will allow your Mac to play your downloads with the native Quicktime Player and Front Row media center software.
2. Download Transmission. This is your magic compass. Set it to launch on startup, listen for .torrents (maps) in your Download folder, and to drop files (treasure) into your Movies folder.
3. Download ted. This is your map finder. Set it to launch on startup and to drop .torrent files (maps) in your Download folder as they become available. Add some shows.

That’s it. You’re done. Tomorrow there will be shows in your Movies folder.

[NOTE: I will include a Windows version if/when I get my trusty Dell to boot again.]

Manually Searching
Searching manually is great for Barbara Walter’s Specials, TV Movies, and new DVDs that’s you’re too impatient to wait for Netflix to deliver. Manual Searching is also a good skill to have in case the automated way skips an episode or two because you forgot to boot up the computer for two weeks or ted thinks a new season started when it hasn’t.

When you bittorrent, you need to know EXACTLY what episode you’re looking for so you know which .torrent file to use as your map. Start by visiting the encyclopedia of TV titles: epguides.com.

Epguides makes it easy to remember that the last episode of The Middleman I saw was the one where they had to go on a boat to keep cursed musical instrument from killing Titanic aficionados. I also found out that it was called “The Cursed Tuba Contingency” and (most importantly) it was Season 1, Episode 7.

Now I can search for “The Middleman S01E07″ on Yahoo, Google, or one of the many .torrent trackers online.

On your Widescreen and In Your Pocket

Downloading holds many advantages over streaming, the biggest advantage being portability. You are no longer tied to a web browser. My wife got an iPhone for Christmas.

The primary reason for the purchase was Google Maps, with Mobile Safari a very close second; however, I know my wife. As soon as TV Junkie #2 catches a few episodes while waiting for the bus… I’ll be loading her iPhone with television. Luckily, I’m prepared.

[To be continued in How To Drop Cable and Satellite and Still Watch Everything, Part 3: On your Widescreen and In Your Pocket]

Boxee inquiry stirs controversy

A few days ago, after bending to tremendous end-user pressure, the folks over at Boxee asked what a Boxee Box should look like, if they should decide to make one. Then all hell broke loose.

Many people are under the impression that if Boxee makes their own hardware, it would signal a shift away from getting their software on 3rd Party hardware. In other words, you either follow the Netflix model or you follow the AppleTV model… there is no middle ground.

So that brings me to ask? Can Boxee “pull a Netflix” and commission it’s own box while also getting it’s SaaS on other maker’s hardware, or does it not have the name recognition to play both sides?

Pirating the 81st Annual Academy Award Nominated Films

For six years Andy Baio has been monitoring the Hollywood vs The Internet battle, and has been using the Ocsars as a measuring point.

So, how did they do? Out of 26 nominated films, an incredible 23 films are already available in DVD quality on nomination day, ripped either from the screeners or the retail DVDs. This is the highest percentage since I started tracking.

Only three films are unavailable — Rachel Getting Married wasn’t leaked online in any form, while Changeling is only available as a low-quality telecine transfer and Australia as a terrible quality camcorder recording. (Update: A DVD screener of Australia was just leaked today.)

[...]

Surprisingly, it seems like this year’s Oscar movies took longer to leak online than in previous years. If I had to guess, it’s because far fewer camcorder copies were released for this year’s nominees. This could be because of the theaters cracking down on camcorder recordings, but I suspect it’s because fewer nominees were desirable targets this year for cams. (Aside from the obvious blockbusters, like Dark Knight, Kung Fu Panda, and Tropic Thunder.) The chart below shows the median number of days from a movie’s US release date to its first leak online.

Tons of data, including graphs and spreadsheets are available.

Article (via Waxy.org)

Boxee asks: What do you want in a Boxee Box?

John Mahoney of Gizmodo writes:

Boxee, makers of fine open-source media center software, apparently couldn’t go anywhere at CES without someone asking them to build a set-top-box. Now they’re asking you if they should go through with the plan.

They’ve posted a survey on their blog to test the waters.

Link to Survey (via Gizmodo)

Watch the Inauguration LIVE

Lots of Network/Internet Partnerships. Lots of links.

FOX is going with Hulu. CBS with Joost’s Everything Obama.

CNN went with Facebook and NBC will be pumping through MSNBC.

C-Span will go it alone with thier Inauguration Hub and the Joint Congressional Committee on Inaugural Ceremonies will be providing a live feed, complete with closed captioning.

If you’re on the go, you can get live tweets via Twitter, or if you have an iPhone, then uStream has you covered.

Watching ‘Secret Life’ Online: Torrents Mislabeled, Stream Gets Direct Link

Downloaders of The Secret Life of the American Teenager are in a panic. Two episodes into Season 2, no torrents are to be found.

Until now.

It turns out that Season 2 hasn’t started at all, and that it’s actually S01E12 and S01E13 that we should be looking for.

The properly labeled episodes can be found on a few trackers but the RSS feeds have yet to figure out the mixup.

If you have the bandwidth, ABC Family has both episodes online. Their new year re-design came a week late, but it has welcome changes, including the ability to link directly to a show.

Now we can all stop panicking and go back to bitching about Hulu pulling It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia.

Hulu steps up, takes the blame [UPDATED]

Muhammad Saleem did a great commentary on The Hulu Situation over @ Mashable.

The Hulu Letter can be found on Sunny’s Page for now (and is re-printed blow), but I recommend you read Muhammad’s write-up if you haven’t been following along.

Customer trust is hard won, easily lost.

On January 9, we removed nearly 3 seasons of full episodes of ”It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia.” We did this at the request of the content owner. Despite Hulu’s opinion and position on such content removals (which we share liberally with all of our content partners), these things do happen and will continue to happen on the Hulu service with regards to some television series. As power users of Hulu have seen, we’ve added a large amount of content to the library each month, and every once in a while we are required to remove some content as well.

This note, however, is not about the fact that episodes of ”It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia” were taken down. Rather, this note is to communicate to our users that we screwed up royally with regards to _how_ we handled this specific content removal and to apologize for our lack of strong execution. We gave effectively no notice to our users that these ”Sunny” episodes would be coming off the service. We handled this in precisely the opposite way that we should have. We believe that our users deserve the decency of a reasonable warning before content is taken down from the Hulu service. Please accept our apologies.

Given the very reasonable user feedback that we have received on this topic (we read every twitter, email and post), we have just re-posted all of the episodes that we had previously removed. I’d like to point out to our users that the content owner in this case – FX Networks – was very quick to say yes to our request to give users reasonable advance notice here, despite the fact that it was the Hulu team that dropped the ball. We have re-posted all of the episodes in the interest of giving people advance notice before the episodes will be taken down two weeks from today. The episodes will be taken down on January 25, 2009. Unfortunately we do not have the permission to keep the specific episodes up on Hulu beyond that. We hope that the additional two weeks of availability will help to address some of the frustration that was felt over the past few days.

The team at Hulu is doing our best to make lemonade out of lemons on this one, but it’s not easy given how poorly we executed here. Please know that we will do our best to learn from this mistake such that the Hulu user experience benefits in other ways down the road.

Sincerely,

Jason Kilar, CEO, Hulu

Internet Television Test, Week 27: Six Months Without Cable and I’ve Missed Nothing

Last night when I told my wife it has been six months since we dropped cable, she couldn’t believe it. She was taken aback. The got weirded out about it again this morning as she was pulling up her daily episode of Hart to Hart.

Six months? Really? It doesn’t feel that long. I guess because it’s gotten so easy.

Like having a child, she is so happy with the result that she doesn’t even remember the labor pains. The only real difference in our TV viewing habit is the loss of the remote control (which I hope to remedy, soon).

Has it really gotten that easy, or are we just used to it?

This thought has been on my mind since New Year’s Eve. My family came to visit and my brother, who can’t send an e-mail and defers his web browsing to his fiancee, leapt toward the computer when I pulled up the Three Stooges page on Hulu. He spent the rest of the morning in Saturday Morning Cartoon Mode. He clicked until he found the episode he’d been looking for for years.

Back to the conversation with my wife.

Easy? That’s because everything is set up and bookmarked! I make this LOOK easy!

When she stopped laughing, she kissed me and went to make toast.

I kept wondering if it’s easy for us because it’s all bookmarked and we’ve found all our current shows, or if it’s really gotten that easy for everyone.

The networks have been doing an excellent job of pimping their websites, so I decided to start there.

I went to all the broadcast and cable network sites I could think of. I’ll be posting a write-up soon. (UPDATE: Link). Some (Like ABC and ABC News) were greatly improved, while others (The Discovery Channel) seem to not get the concept.

Then there’s the subject of the shows we DON’T stream.

I’ve come to the conclusion that in January 2009 streaming TV is easier than it used to be, but still not there yet, and bittorrent/RSS is still too difficult for the masses.

More and more people are cutting the cable to go all-internet, but we still don’t have a killer set top box. You can’t expect people to choose between watching on a computer and hooking a computer up to a TV.

AppleTV needs streaming, The Roku box needs downloads, TiVo needs to cut the cable, and a game console is a poor substitute for a dedicated internet television device.

Whoever gets the streaming/download balance correct can rule the Widescreen.
I’m looking at you, Boxee.

This year promises to be interesting.

How To Drop Cable and Satellite and Still Watch Everything, Part 1: Streaming

Times are tough. We’re all looking for ways to cut spending. After looking at my cable bill, I decided (with zero research and zero preparation) to see if my wife and I could live without television for 52 weeks, relying solely on the internet.

Two TV Junkies under one roof can consume a remarkable amount of programming content. If there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s that there is no silver bullet one-size-fits-all solution to replacing television with the internet. We watch a mixture of streamed shows and downloads.

After a bit of a learning curve we’re up to speed and have not missed a single show. Election night was a bit tense, but I didn’t miss a beat. Plus, we’ve saved $250 in five months. Best of all, my setup has passed The Wife Test (your milage may vary).

Streaming

Streaming gets me in that instant-gratification way that video-on-demand should. It’s perfect for when I sit down and I don’t know what I’m in the mood to watch. In the old days I would have flipped channels or consulted The Guide to see what was on. Now I browse for what’s available and the selection just keeps getting bigger.

There’s a ton of services out there that want you to download and install their software. DON’T DO IT!! If it’s not crawling with spyware, it’s big and bloated and unnecessary. All you need is a Mac or PC built in the last half-decade and a web browser.

Free Streams:
Five months ago I felt that I needed to make a page of links for each show I wanted to watch; because I never knew what there was to find, where to find it, or how long it would be there after I found it. (It’s still mostly true, but it’s gotten a lot better.)

In the last few months, the networks have wised up quite a bit and most of them are offering at least some streaming (and it’s usually their biggest shows). All the major broadcast networks (ABC, NBC, CBS, FOX, The CW, and PBS) are doing it, and several of the Cable Networks are dipping their toes in as well. USA Network, HGTV, A&E, CNN, The Discovery Channel, TLC, Animal Planet, Food Network, Lifetime, ABC Family, MTV, and even TBS and The Weather Channel.

UPDATE: (March 2009) A much longer List of Links is on the right column of every page. —> –> —> –> —> –> —> –> —> –> —> –>

YouTube, the big kahuna of online streaming, will be offering MGM Movies and CBS Television soon, but the big dog in a post-television television world may just be Hulu.com.

Hulu is my first stop when looking for a show. Hulu even lists things they DON’T show, but only if they’re available through official distribution channels. They don’t link to JustinTV, TVLinks.cc, SurftheChannel, ChannelChooser, TV-Video.Net, WatchTVSitcoms, or other grey-market sites.

For those things, Google is your friend. If you have little ones, you will find The Disney Channel & Disney Channel 2 by any means necessary.

Sometimes you don’t feel like searching for things. Sometimes you just want to “turn it on and let it go”. For those times, I go to Joost. Just last night, I was watching a collection of Christmas Episodes from random TV Shows.

For mindless music in the background there’s Pandora, for music videos there’s MTV Music and Songza.

Paid Streams:
Netflix. Technically it’s a paid stream but because my bill didn’t change it feels free. All-you-can-watch streaming is part of most Netflix plans (including mine) and I use it.

I don’t have a Windows PC or an Intel Mac so I can’t see it in my browser (like most people); however, there are an increasing number of gadgets that allow you to watch Netflix streaming, most of them more likely to be attached to your TV than your computer is. If you have a new Samsung BluRay Player, a TiVo HD, The Netflix Player by Roku, or an XBox 360 you can get Netflix Streaming on your TV. Me? I’m buying a Mac mini.

Fancast is a some-free, some-paid browser-based streaming site. It had a very interesting beta period this summer, but now that the networks are waking up, it seems a bit redundant. It’s a great bookmark for those hard-to-find episodes.

If you live in Wisconsin, and have RoadRunner / Time Warner, and have a PC running XP or Vista then you are in the test market for HBO on Broadband.

Downloads

Streaming isn’t perfect. If my wife is streaming Hart to Hart from Hulu, I’d better not be surfing YouTube on the laptop. If she was watching Fringe (which we download) I’d be fine.

Also, if the weather’s bad, the internet gets slow. That means lots of paused streams and filling buffers. (Continued in How To Drop Cable and Satellite and Still Watch Everything, Part 2: Downloads.)

[Digg] @ http://digg.com/television/Replace_Cable_TV_with_The_Internet_Part_1_Streaming

DVD’s Assassination is BluRay’s Only Hope

Two weeks ago, I wrote that BluRay was doomed to take LaserDisc’s place as a movie-and-gadget-geek-only format.

The article was based on the assumption that the studios would cling to DVD sales as hard as they clung to VHS (which they are finally letting die – a decade after DVD’s launch).

However… what if they decided to knife DVD, leaving BluRay as your only choice? Would they do it?

It’s possible. The home video market is very different than it was in the mid-1990s.

Before DVD
DVD was the result of a compromise between a group of consumer electronics makers with a collection of 5″ laser disc technology patents collectively called the “Digital Video Disc” format and a competing group of consumer electronics makers with a collection of 5″ laser disc technology patents collectively called the “Multi-Media Compact Disc” format.

In an effort to avoid battling a format war in the market, they all agreed to use roughly half of each group’s patents and bury the other half. After months of negotiations both sides won some battles, lost some battles, and together they finalized the unified format. They named it “Digital Versatile Disc”.

Like MMCD, and unlike Digital Video Disc, it could be used both in a stand-alone player as a movie-only disc and in a computer as a data disc. Unfortunately, because the initials were the same as one of the old formats, the name confused everyone and flamewars erupted on usenet forums and in Compuserve chat rooms.

To end the bickering the name was changed again; this time to “DVD” (pronounced “DeeVeeDee”), which officially stands for nothing.

DVD Launches
The consumer electronics makers (united under a single format) were behind DVD, but the content providers weren’t so assured.

There was no way to know if customers were going to buy players, or this format was going to be another VCD or CD-i. The DVD disc pressing plants were just built/retooled (at a great cost) and no disc had broken the half-million mark, yet. Investment was a great risk, and only two studios had titles available at launch.

DiVX
Circuit City tried to splinter the format with it’s DiVX pay-per-view discs. Launching it’s scheme at the same time as DVD’s national rollout, they marketed it as a “feature of DVD” and told customers that “all the new models will have it”. Although CC tried their hardest, the format got the fate it deserved (It died and had a codec named after it.*) but not before creating customer confusion and stirring up technophobia.

The VHS Cash Cow vs LaserDisc II
While DVD was fighting the format war it hoped to avoid, cheap VHS tapes sold everywhere from gas stations to Wal-Mart and $100 priced-to-rent tapes sold like hotcakes to Blockbuster Video stores across the country.

The fact that a VHS tape cost more to produce and cost more to ship than a DVD was negated by the huge difference in the volume of sales.

Switching to DVD from VHS had other costs, too. Everything has to be re-mastered. Everybody expects extras. DVD Menu designers aren’t free. Music rights must be re-negotiated. SAG and the DGA expect to be paid, but the format isn’t mentioned in anybody’s contracts – so we need everyone to sign off, etc. etc.

…just more and more reasons to keep milking VHS.

New Format on the Block: Then vs Now
In 1998, the only way to get a movie on your TV at 480i with multi-channel sound was to have it encoded onto a plastic disc.

DVD, at 5″, was easer to handle than the 12″ Laserdiscs and on most movies you didn’t have to flip the disc.

Both plastic discs required mail-order or a trip to the store before you could start watching a movie. You gave the same effort for each and every movie, whether it was an old favorite or a just-watch-once guilty pleasure.

In 2008, to get a get a movie on your TV at 720p or 1080i/p with multi-channel sound, you can have it on a plastic disc or on your hard drive.
You can download it, stream it, mail-order it, or buy/rent it at the store.

Your opinion of each particular movie will greatly effect:
a) how much effort you’re willing to put into getting it
b) how long you’re willing to wait to begin watching
b) how much you care about technical specs
c) how many dollars you’re willing to spend on buying or renting it.
d) whether its a purchase or a rental.

Which format you watch your movie on will be decided be on a case-by-case basis.

It’s no longer one physical format vs another physical format in a winner-take-all battle. It’s a physical format and two internet-based delivery methods splitting the market into three pieces.

While internet-based delivery will be divided between downloads and streaming, there isn’t enough room in the market for two mainstream physical formats. Unless the industry collectively gets together and kills DVD, familiarity, ubiquity, and the “good enough” resolution from upscaling DVD Players will keep DVD the last word in Physical Formats for Movies just like familiarity, ubiquity, and the “good enough” sound resolution from oversampling CD Players kept DVD-Audio and SACD from unseating the Compact Disc as the mainstream’s choice in Physical Formats for Music.

Physical formats will never go away, but I don’t think BluRay has enough momentum to be The Big Kahuna.

2009: Paranoid Studios, DRM, and a Tanked Economy
So, the reasons to keep a legacy format around are obvious, but are there reasons to kill one? Yes, but they aren’t very obvious to the casual observer.

1. BluRay, as a collection of 5″ laser disc technology patents, is owned by fewer companies than DVD. Yes all the major studios have titles in both formats, but fewer consumer electronics makers hold patents in the collection of 5″ laser disc technology patents that make up the format, so each maker gets a bigger piece of the pie.

2. BluRay discs have a higher profit margin, so it’s a bigger pie.

3. DVD disc sales cannibalize BluRay disc sales.

4. DRM, which is fancy corporate-speak for Copy Protection. BluRay has more of it than DVD, and BluRay players get updates… allowing for additional control. Studios like control.

5. Studios can negotiate different terms for “HD” distribution as they have with “SD”, therefore have an opprotunity to squeeze a lot of smaller filmmakers for their pennies.

6. The economy is in the toilet. It is more cost effective to have a streamlined catalog.

7. Uh… Blue is pretty (and other “because we feel like it” reasons).

That’s all I can think of. I’m out.

Will they do it?
There are reasons to keep DVD around until it dies of natural causes (like VHS) and there are reasons to knife it early (like propping up BluRay). Which will they do?

Only time will tell.

*The fact that the codec was originally made out of a hacked version of VC-1 in an abandon-ware a/v container and used mainly to steal DVD content is mildly amusing.